Singer/song writer Del Barber blew in from Winnipeg, Manitoba, like a warm prairie wind on Saturday, October 29, and won a lot of Ontario hearts.

Barber was the headliner at the second concert of the St. Lawrence Acoustic Stage winter series: he definitely lived up to critical praise that has described him as “sincere and heartfelt” and “electric” on stage.

Winner just last week of two Western Music Awards, Barber was completely at ease in the intimate St. Lawrence stage setting. His songs ranged from the jaunty Walking Down Town with a Country Girl to the poignant and memorable Home to Manitoba.

Barber is a born raconteur.

His songs are introduced with anecdotes and stories that serve the narrative flavour of his music well. Although he is a proud Westerner, he understands the ambivalence about the west many prairie people have.

“Western Canada is young, I guess, and it just hasn’t laid down the roots it needs,” Barber told the audience. “So many young people just dream of leaving their small towns.”

His song about a waitress who spent all her young years believing that she needed to “escape” the prairies to find her “perfect man and perfect kids” touched a chord.

“Her dreams fell asleep on the top bunk/And woke up on the floor…”

He sang of the eternal hold the land has on Western Canadians in the touching Home to Manitoba.

“There’s a piece of land still holds/The shadow of my name..”

Barber also has a gift for sharing with listeners the hilarious, the ironic, the unexpected fun of every day life.

The crowd roared with laughter as he described in wonderful songs his misadventures as a travelling artist in the wilds of northern Manitoba, as a teenager driving his first blind date Jasmine in his mom’s 1992 Dodge Colt, as a secret lover of Archie comics.

Barber sings with passion and humour. His guitar doesn’t just accompany him, he makes it sing along with him. There is a lot of the poet in his song lyrics: he has a way of finding just the right way to say things.

When he completed his set audiences left the concert hall literally grinning.

Opening for Del Barber was Carleton Place artist Brea Lawrenson.

Only in the early days of a promising musical career, Lawrenson is still developing the polish, and the on-stage ease, that are so much the elements of a seasoned musical performer. However, as she grew more comfortable with the Saturday night audience, her lyrics became clearer, her singing more controlled. When she and brother Sean sang together, her talent was evident.

There is a lot of passion and power in this emerging young artist. Her deep love of family and her dreams for the future colour the lyrics of her songs like the touching Hold On (written about her mother’s support) and Somewhere to Go, her determination to make it in the musical world.

Brea Lawrenson will be an artist to watch as her career unfolds.

The audiences at the Saturday concert certainly enjoyed a memorable concert evening.

Del Barber, who told the Leader in an earlier interview that he likes to “read,” to “get the feel of his listeners” when he performs, found a whimsical and typically humorous way to tell Saturday’s concert goers how much he was enjoying his South Dundas reception.

“Sometimes when I perform, I feel a bit like a man wearing a hot dog costume trying to sell hot dogs to people who really want burgers. But here in Morrisburg, I kind of feel I’m a man in a hot dog suit selling hots dogs to people who actually want hot dogs.”

The next concert in the St. Lawrence Stage series will take place on November 19, an evening of Intimate Acoustics.

“Do we have the right to take another person’s life,” Arlene Miller plaintively asks her lover, dentist Mitchell Lovell. “Of course not,” he replies impatiently. “That’s why it’s called murder!”

That’s also why audiences can anticipate an evening devoted, in a nicely twisted way, to the theme of homicide as Upper Canada Playhouse stages its second comic production of the summer season, Murder at the Howard Johnsons, which runs until July 20.

Of course, since this is a comedy, and a very funny one at that, Hannibal Lector, Lizzie Borden and Norman Bates these three, Paul Miller, Arlene Miller and Mitchell Lovell, are not. In fact, their approach to homicide has more overtones of Wile E. Coyote than of Jack the Ripper. Not that the characters in Murder don’t try to succeed. You might even say they are positively dying to kill.

The play is completely set in the late 1970s, a time of self actualization work shops, of ‘finding’ yourself, of realizing your full potential. The new motto of the decade was “Me first”, and these characters completely embrace that concept.

Arlene Miller, played by Susan Greefield, is particularly caught up in the whole ‘explore your inner you’ movement. That’s why she has decided to take a lover (the family dentist) and get rid of (literally) her car salesman husband, Paul. “I out grew him…I hadn’t awakened as a person. Now I’ve blossomed.”

Mitchell (Timm Hughes) the dentist, has a closet of clothing that is an “adventure”, and a hankering to find his soul mate as well, although he plans to try out a number of prospects along the way. “I love women. And I especially love Arlene.”

This quest for ‘self’ is all very confusing to Paul Miller (Jamie Willliams) the husband. Life, he is firmly convinced, is out to “shaft you.” He still has both feet firmly entrenched in the 50s, choosing to measure the world in grey suits, dollar bills and particularly expensive watches.

Paul (to Arlene): Name one thing you haven’t got?

Arlene: Happiness!

Paul: Arlene, you are talking about a very small part of life!

The plot of Murder kicks in immediately, and never slows down.

With bizarre logic, in the early minutes of the play, Arlene and Mitchell decide they must “do in’ her husband so they can be together. Paul, the intended victim, is stunned.

Paul: You’re going to kill me! You two amateurs!

Mitchell: We may be amateurs now, but by the time we leave we’ll be seasoned veterans!

It’s the start of a series of delicious homicides that flavour this classic Ron Clark and Sam Bobrick comedy.

In a fast paced two hours, nothing will go the way constantly shifting combinations of conspirators plan.

Director Jesse Collins demonstrates a sure touch with the timing and characterizations of this show. In spite of the bizarre events on stage, Hughes, Williamson and Greenfield have created fully realized characters. In their own way, why, they almost make the audience nostalgic for the good, old-fashioned selfishness of the 70s!

On stage murder plots gradually become ever more Rube Goldeberg in their nature and design. By the time that a Howard Johnsons window ledge, some July 4th fire works, a large pillow and a pigeon with loose bowels come to figure into the conspiracies, the hysterical crowd hardly knows for whom of the trio they should be rooting.

I may have found myself wondering, more than once, just how this whole plot was going to be resolved. I shouldn’t have worried. It has its own logic.

“Why do we keep trying to kill each other? We’re no good at it,” Paul wearily announces.

His observation stops no one.

How fortunate for the Playhouse audiences!

Be sure to make a reservation at this Howard Johnsons. But better beware. The laughter there may kill you.

Murder at the Howard Johnsons is currently on stage at Upper Canada Playhouse, until July 20. For tickets and information contact the box office at 613-543-3713 or 1-877-550-3650 or www.uppercanadaplayhouse.com